By Julie Light, Corporate Watch, 8 July 1999

Tijuana residents refer to the border as "la linea," the
line. More than a
just a political boundary la linea locates both Mexico and the United
States on opposite sides of the coin in a global system of trade and
production. Corporate Watch traveled to Tijuana and San Diego and spoke
with activists on both sides of the border. This Feature looks at how
labor and gender rights, occupational and community health and the
environment are all
casualties of so called free trade

In this feature you'll find:

Fact sheets and image maps with statistics on which companies operate on
the border and what they produce, average wages compared to the cost of
living and much more.

Women, who make up the majority of maquiladora workers face rampant
discrimination and sexual harassment.
But conditions on the border have
spawned promising new forms of gender and workplace organizing, as our
piece Engendering Change points out:
http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/feature/border/women/engendering.html

Bi-national coalitions are fighting corporations "right" to destroy the
environment and community health. The section on Environmental Justice on
the Line, looks at some of these battles.

Companies locate on the border to take advantage of cheap labor and lax
occupational health regulations. We hear first hand testimony on working
conditions.

EDITORIAL

June 30, 1999

Tecate, Mexico--Tecate's coat of arms dubs this Mexican
town "Baja California's Industrial Paradise." About 30 miles
from Tijuana, the city is home to the Tecate brewery and
also houses an industrial park filled with assembly plants, or
maquiladoras. This "industrial paradise" is one of several
Mexican border boomtowns that is part of a global
production system. "People say 'Tecate, that's where they
make that beer', but Tecate is fast becoming 'where they
make that car, where they make that television'," says Jos
Bravo, Coordinator of the Border Justice Project of the
bi-national Southwest Network for Environmental and
Economic Justice.

In Tijuana, residents refer to the border as "la linea," the
line. La linea has come to demarcate more than a political
boundary. It locates both Mexico and the United States on
opposite sides of the coin in a global system of trade and
production.

On a recent visit to California, Mexican president Ernesto
Zedillo told corporate executives that Southern California
and Baja California are rapidly becoming a single economy,
which Zedillo optimistically promises will be "the most
dynamic economic growth area of the world for the next
century." California Governor Gray Davis told a town
meeting in Los Angeles that "when Mexico's economy
thrives, California benefits. And, when California thrives,
Mexico benefits."

Official optimism aside, it is the maquiladora industry that has
turned Mexico into California's number one trading partner.
Corporate headquarters remain north of la linea, while
assembly plants are mushrooming south of the border.
Corporations reap record profits, while poor and working
communities on both sides of la linea are consigned to
low-wage jobs and environmental health hazards. The
US-Mexico border is a microcosm of North-South relations
in a global economy where corporations call the shots, and
poor nations sell off labor rights and the environment to the
highest bidder.

The term maquiladora comes from the Spanish word
"maquila", used to describe the payment millers historically
received from peasants for grinding corn. The analogy refers
to the "value added" to the materials that are assembled on
the border. Foreign companies import machinery and
materials duty free and export finished products to the US.
Top management is usually foreign, while Mexican
subcontractors often supply the labor force and even the
plant. Shiny, modern industrial parks, known as export
processing zones in pre-NAFTA days, house scores of
factories from Mattel toys to Sony electronics to General
Motors' auto parts.

In the 30 years since the first export processing zones
opened, nearly a million Mexicans have migrated to the
border to work in the maquiladoras for as little as 50 cents
an hour. Government agricultural policies have made it
almost impossible to eke out a living in rural communities and
unemployment in the interior is rampant. In the 1960's and
70's the first industrial parks attracted textile companies that
employed an almost entirely female workforce. Now some
4,500 foreign companies operate plants that assemble
electronics, cars, toys, furniture and medical equipment, and
men account for more than 40% of the labor force.

The export-processing sector is the only part of Mexico's
economy that's booming. More than a million maquiladora
workers generate about ten billion dollars a year in foreign
exchange. But the export boom comes at a price: the global
race to the bottom of the wage scale, tens of thousands of
workers made ill by inadequate occupational health
protections, rampant sex discrimination, and industrial
pollution that threatens communities on both sides of the
border. "I've had contact with more than one hundred
companies (operating on the border) and I haven't found one
that respects Mexican labor rights," explains economist
Jaime Cota who counsels maquiladora workers on their
rights.

The debate around the passage of the North American Free
Trade Agreement five and a half years ago shone a spotlight
on these issues. Despite environmental and labor side
agreements signed after protests by activists from Mexico,
Canada and the US, these problems have not gone away. In
fact, they've gotten worse. We traveled to Tijuana and San
Diego and spoke with activists on both sides of the border.
This Feature looks at how labor and gender rights,
occupational and community health and the environment are
all casualties of so called free trade. We argue that just as the
problems along the border are bi-national, so too must be
the solutions. And we look to the grassroots--part of what
Mexican's call civil society--not governments or
corporations, to take the lead in forging those solutions.
Activists told us that their struggles for environmental and
economic justice can indeed fundamentally challenge the
status quo.

Industry executives, like Dale Robinson, former president of
the Western Maquiladora Trade Association, assert that
Mexicans benefit from jobs and government mandated
training and education. "People in the plants have jobs that
are helping provide a living for their families," says Robinson.
But wages on the border have remained stagnant, ranging
between fifty cents and a dollar an hour, since the first export
processing zones were opened in 1965. The average cost of
living for a family of four is estimated at three to four times
that amount.

"Of course it's not enough to feed a family," comments
Cipriana Jurado, Coordinator of the Worker Research and
Solidarity Center (CISO) in Ciudad Jußrez, across the
border from El Paso, Texas. Jurado worked in maquiladoras
for ten years, from the age of 13, before becoming a full-time
organizer. Meanwhile, attempts to organize independent
labor unions have met with repression, including efforts at
Tijuana's Han Young auto parts plant featured in our action
alert.

Sex discrimination in the maquilas is notorious. Human Rights
Watch has documented the widespread practice of testing
women for pregnancy as a condition of employment.
Workers who become pregnant are sometimes fired.
Women also face sexual harassment, unequal pay for the
same work as men and a glass ceiling that prevents their
promotion to middle management.

Some women even pay with their lives when they move to
the border to find work. There have been 180 murders of
young women in Ciudad Jußrez over the last six years, most
of them maquila workers. As articles in this Feature point
out, these murders are a grisly reminder of the social costs of
free trade.

However, conditions on the border have also spawned a
unique approach to gender and worker organizing, as the
piece "Engendering Change" in this Feature points out. "I've
opened my eyes and realized that I have rights and that I
have to make them worth something at work and at home,"
one Tijuana worker told us.

Although Mexico has tough environmental laws, enforcement
is lax. There is no "right to know" law in Mexico, so both
workers and communities are denied information about the
toxins to which they are exposed. Companies pollute freely,
degrading the border environment. Toxic waste, which
should be returned to the US or other countries by law, is
often stored on site, posing a health risk to both workers and
surrounding communities. Border communities report a
deterioration of public health ranging from respiratory
problems to skin irritations and neurological disorders
believed to be caused by industrial pollution.

Occupational health and safety laws also go unenforced in
Mexico, where workers are routinely exposed to a range of
solvents, glues and other toxic chemicals, often without
adequate protection. Warning labels are frequently in
English, making them of little use to a Spanish-speaking
workforce. Workers often leave their jobs rather than
endure the harassment that demanding enforcement of
occupational safety codes would bring. We profile two
courageous workers at the Alaris Medical company who
sued their employer after they faced serious health problems
following a workplace accident.

Despite the high price being paid by Mexico for the presence
of the maquila industry, neither labor nor environmental
justice groups are calling for corporations to pull up stakes.
Instead, activists are demanding tough environmental and
labor standards to be imposed by the government, and for
foreign companies to pay a living wage. "Mexico needs jobs,
but not at the price of health, not just of those working in the
maquiladoras, but also of communities that they pollute."
says organizer Cipriana Jurado. "The companies should pay
a fair wage that allows a family to live with dignity and not
just subsist," she adds.

While political leaders celebrate the economic integration of
Northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States, they
fail to acknowledge that the benefits of free trade are not
equal. The true winners are not citizens on either side of the
frontier, but transnational corporations. If corporations
operate beyond borders, so too must the movement that
seeks to combat the environmental and human rights
violations committed by those companies. Cross border
organizing strengthens links between labor, women's and
environmental justice movements internationally. As the victory over the
proposed Sierra Blanca nuclear waste dump in
Texas shows, the power of bi-national coalitions can be formidable.

But if the obstacles to organizing on either side of la linea are
enormous, the obstacles to cross-border organizing are greater
still.
Activists must bridge the gap in unequal resources, cultural and
linguistic differences and face the slow pace of change.
Yet grassroots activists are increasingly recognizing their common
interests. The activists we spoke with are not looking to either the
Mexican or US governments to provide the answers. Instead, they say the
solutions will come
from the bottom up in communities along both sides of the border.

sleepy-little-towns-turned-boomtowns may find that their days as
paradise for industry are numbered. In Tecate, community activists are
fighting contamination of the local river by the brewery, the
privatization of a public park and
the destruction of ancient petroglyphs by a developer. They say their
fight has only just begun.